Guest opinion: America's wealthy riding on backs of others

Richard Borawski

Thursday

Jan 20, 2011 at 12:01 AMJan 20, 2011 at 5:17 PM

The wealthy elite obviously believe in their divine right to ALL the fruits of the labor of others!

When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, the national debt was less than $1 trillion. Thirty years later, bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and crippled by Wall Street chicanery, we are saddled with a crushing $14 trillion debt.

The financial industry, aided and abetted by politicians, has been relentlessly transferring wealth upwards. They no longer even need the cover of Reagan’s fraudulent supply-side economics (the trickle down theory). Today, they engage in complex financial mechanisms (derivatives, etc.), which are, in reality, blatant Ponzi schemes.

Their accomplices at Fox News (with their brains centered in their gluteus) cynically label unemployment benefits and welfare as “income redistribution,” conveniently overlooking the fact that the top 2 percent of our population control 50 percent of American wealth.

When fair-minded people draw attention to this gross inequity, they are accused of engaging in “class warfare.”

The Republican Party recently held hostage extension of unemployment benefits to their insistence on continuance of tax cuts for the top 2 percent.

With a true unemployment rate at 20 percent, it was hardly the time to exhibit such scorn for the millions of Americans facing eviction and those already living in their cars.

To comprehend matters, food banks across the country face dire shortages in food supplies to aid the poor.

The wealthy elite obviously believe in their divine right to ALL the fruits of the labor of others!

“Short of genius, a rich man cannot imagine poverty.” – Charles Peguy

-- Richard Borawski, New Hartford, Mass.

Observer-Dispatch (N.Y.)

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